Be Patient In Renewing Sibling Bond

‘If you would keep your soul from spotted sight or sound, live like the velvet mole; go burrow underground.”

- Elinor Wylie, poet

Dear Jennifer: My relationship with my brother suffers from profound neglect. There hasn’t been a conflict or crisis, just a lack of interest. We see each other a few times a year for holiday-type things and always in a group. I know nothing of his life and he knows little of mine. We are really strangers who have this awkward tie that says we should be more.

I now long to close the emotional space between us. We live within an hour of each other, but I don’t know how.

- Emily

Dear Emily: There is no guarantee that people who are genetically related or share growing up will end up friends; many do not. Sometimes the pain of early experiences makes siblings want to avoid being reminded. Many families do not model loyalty or closeness, so siblings do not know how to be “family” when they grow up.

It is worth it to try to build a friendship (you do have a unique bond) but do it on his terms. Most men prefer activity to “intimate talk” as a way to build a friendship. Invite him to do something with you and your friends or spouse (hiking, skiing, whatever interests you share). Ask him to help you build, move or pick out something.

Whatever activity you do together, don’t sneak in comments about old family business. Concentrate on learning who he is now and sharing your current life.

Invest in years of just being easy together with few expectations until he clearly indicates a willingness to talk about the past.

If you find this too frustrating, it may mean that you are not as interested in being close to him as you are in shaking out some old family conflicts. If he really is avoiding you, that may be why.

- Jennifer

Dear Jennifer: I am writing for your best tip on dealing with discouragement.

- Ellen

Dear Ellen: Little discouragements are easy to cure with a new perspective: Call a friend, take a walk, read a novel, dig in the garden.

My best cure is to force myself to create order (closet, kitchen, office, garden) so that I get some feeling of accomplishment.

Big discouragements take bigger skills or they can last a lifetime. Find things that you can succeed at to build successes instead of hoping for a love or a job that may not be there. Notice what or who gives you pleasure and expand those opportunities even if they don’t meet your bigger goals.

Try to identify the voices behind the discouraging messages just in case they are not yours. List out your achievements and your failures and see what the balance is. Check to see whether your expectations for yourself are fair.

Some of us believe that life is a certain package of things that we should acquire. I believe that life is a journey, not a package or a destination.

You’ve inspired me to put together some materials on what to do when the “discouragement blues” follow us on our journey. I’ll send you what I put together.

- Jennifer

Dear Jennifer: Regarding your column, “Population Concern Just Good Sense,” in The Spokesman-Review (2/4/96).

Jennifer, after reading those two somewhat critical letters to you, I could not help feeling almost a little amused upon observing how, in our free society, there seems to be virtually no impediments whatever to people advancing their own agendas contrary to every precept of reason or moderation, regardless of the consequences to themselves, their communities, their nation or to the world at large.

One can almost admire the idyllic enthusiasm of the lady with six children declaring she is raising them all to make the world a better place, when odds are that at least a couple of them will end their lives in heart-wrenching conditions of poverty and want.

… To conclude, let me say that if there is one thing in life that has me completely baffled, it is the sexual and reproductive passion between the sexes. The procreation of one human life entails awesome responsibility. Yet the world population continues to soar.

- Daniel

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James The Spokesman-Review